Normalizing Sexual Violence

Abstract

Despite high rates of gendered violence among youth, very few young women report these incidents to authority figures. This study moves the discussion from the question of why young women do not report them toward how violence is produced, maintained, and normalized among youth. The girls in this study often did not name what law, researchers, and educators commonly identify as sexual harassment and abuse. How then, do girls name and make sense of victimization? Exploring violence via the lens of compulsory heterosexuality highlights the relational dynamics at play in this naming process. Forensic interviews with youth revealed patterns of heteronormative scripts appropriated to make sense of everyday harassment, violence, coercion, and consent. Findings inform discussions about the links between dominant discourses and sexual subjectivities as we try to better understand why many regard violence a normal part of life.

Why Sexual Assault Survivors Do Not Report to Universities: A Feminist Analysis

“…This theme arose more than any other in the rationales provide for not reporting. As with Hlavka's (2014) findings, the women in our study might have internalized notions that male violence against women is normal and not worth reporting. Hlavka found young women often respond to sexual aggression by ignoring the behavior, avoiding the perpetrator, or diverting attention, and some survivors in our study spoke about handling the situation themselves.…”

“…These responses may indicate that the young women internalized messages from the dominant culture, encouraging them to dismiss and downplay the severity of the violence enacted on them. This is consistent with a rape culture in which the dominant discourse normalizes men's sexual violence against women (e.g., Hlavka, 2014) and heteronormative messages that view male sexuality as aggressive, powerful, and dominant are rampant (Butler, 1999;Johnson, 2005). It is also possible that the women felt sufficiently capable to handle the experience in a way that suited them and did not see a need to report it to the university.…”

Symbolic Compliance and Student Concerns: Legal Endogeneity and Title IX at American Colleges and Universities

“…3 Scholars suggest that these alarming numbers are partially due to the prevalence of alcohol in college sexual encounters, the relationship between sexual violence and "hooking up," and "rape culture" 4 (Armstrong and Hamilton 2013;Armstrong, Hamilton, and Sweeney 2006;Bogle 2008;Deming et al 2013;Pham 2019;Wade 2017). Indeed, sexual assault is so common on campus that young women understand their experiences of sexual violence as "normal" (Hlavka 2014). By explicitly defining sexual assault between students as sexual harassment, the DCL shifted the meaning of sexual harassment in higher education from a narrative of exploitation between faculty and students, "the lecherous professor" of the 1980s and 1990s (Dzeich and Weiner 1990), to a discussion of interpersonal violence embedded in the social institutions of college life (Khan et al 2018).…”

“…The same report finds that approximately 6.1% of college men experience sexual violence before graduation. 4 "Rape culture" is a term used by feminist activists and scholars to describe a social setting in which violence against women is prevalent and normalized(Hlavka 2014;Wade 2017).…”

New masculinities and pedagogy of freedom

“…Sin embargo, a pesar de los logros cosechados en este ámbito se observan vacíos que la investigación en educación debe considerar. Entre estos vacíos encontramos la ausencia de análisis que identifiquen modelos alternativos de masculinidad que permitan superar la violencia de género y acoso en las generaciones más jóvenes y en los centros escolares (Hlavka, 2014;Sousa, 1999;Renold, 2001). Los resultados que se presentan en este artículo tienen como propósito llenar este vacío considerando las conclusiones a las que se llegó en el proyecto de investigación: "Impacto de los actos comunicativos en la construcción de nuevas masculinidades" (2010-2013) dirigido por la Dra.…”